Is a leading right-liberal discovering traditionalism—or multiculturalism?

Or to put it another way, is Natan Sharansky going back to the past—or back to the future?

In the neocon New York Sun last week, Ira Stoll wrote:

In a new book, “Defending Identity,” [Natan] Sharansky reports that his own experience and his reading of American history convince him that, as he puts it, “far from being the hostile enemy of democracy, identity is in fact necessary to sustain it.”

Mr. Sharansky writes that although identity can be “used destructively,” it is also “a crucial force for good.” Strong identities, he says, “are as valuable to a well-functioning society as they are to secure and committed well-functioning individuals. Just as the advance of democracy is critical to securing international peace and stability, so too is cultivating strong identities.”

Here is an editorial review of the book at Amazon.com that gives a cogent summary of its thesis:

If the history of the twentieth century can be seen as a successful struggle to expand personal freedoms, then the history of the twenty-first century will be seen as a contest to assert cultural, ethnic, or religious identities. [LA replies: I think, though I’m not sure, that what’s being implied here is that liberalism has gone too far in denying non-liberal values of culture, nationhood, religion, etc., and now there is a need to restore them.] From the crisis in Europe where identity is seen as inimical to democratic freedoms, to the threats to identity posed by postmodern relativism and Marxism, to the corrosive dullness of identity-less cosmopolitanism, Sharansky conducts a philosophical tour of nations, regions and cities whose futures rest precariously on the struggle for identity. His purpose throughout is to recover this most valuable and essential political emotion, one that can reaffirm and underpin democratic societies. [LA replies: In other words, as I’ve said, liberalism or democracy can only be sustainable and non-harmful if it operates within and is subordinated to a cultural system which is not itself liberal.] Together, identity and democracy assert a powerful and benign sense of purpose; divided, at odds with each other, they invite fundamentalism and rootlessness.

On the face of it, it seems that Sharansky is saying that the current orthodoxy of universalist liberalism—of which he has been a major advocate—is a threat to basic human values. If this is really what he is saying, it represents a complete reversal both of left-liberalism (such as reigns in Europe) AND of right-liberalism or neoconservatism.

Furthermore, a New York Sun editorial informs us that Sharansky recently gave a copy of his book to Sen. McCain, who promised him he would read it overnight. Given that McCain has explicitly attacked the very idea of a national identity based on culture, it will be interesting how he responds to Sharansky’s book.

* * *

However, Felice Manzar’s review of Sharansky’s book in yesterday’s New York Post (reproduced below) makes me question my hopeful take on what Sharansky is saying. His thesis seems more superficial than I had thought, and involves defense of such things as Muslim women in Western society wearing the veil. In other words, Sharansky’s concern seems to be the identity of non-Western minority groups in the West at least as much as it is the identity of the Western nations themselves. And his primary concern is Jewish identity. Further, based on Manzar’s quotes, it seems that in Sharansky’s view identity is a kind of handmaid to democracy. Democracy, not the life of a concrete people and society, remains his primary value, which means that he has not gone beyond liberalism.

Also, as shown by two VFR entries from 2004, “Without nationhood and particularity, there can be no freedom,” and “A reader finds a contradiction in my entry on Sharansky”, Sharansky in his earlier book was already touching on the need for identity. But, again, given the ambiguity of the reviews and of Sharansky’s own quoted statements, it’s not certain, short of reading his new book, whether among the groups that he sees as requiring identity are such groups as, oh, the British people, the Irish people, the American people, Western civilization, Christendom …

Here is the review from the NY Post:

“DEFENDING IDENTITY”
FREE TO BE YOU AND ME
By FELICE MARANZ

June 8, 2008—“Fundamentalist Islam seeks to wipe out Jewish identity and absorb Israel into a monolithic Muslim rule, headed by a caliphate. European post-nationalism rejects the separateness of Jewish identity and imagines a democratic order without identity that will pacify the region.”

Natan Sharansky’s argument—for Israel, as well as all nations—is that both ways are flawed. You can’t have cultural identity without democracy; and you can’t have a democracy without identity.

The former Soviet dissident and Israeli government minister dissects identity in his new book, and recommends a partnership between passionate self-awareness and commitment to rule of law. But the heart of the book is Sharansky’s defense of Israel as a Jewish state and his reiteration of the centrality of functioning democracy, as outlined in his previous book, “The Case for Democracy.” The new book serves both as a counter to the current vogue for a “one state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as a response to those of Sharansky’s critics who wonder what happened to his human rights activism.

Based on a series of conversations with co-writer Shira Wolosky Weiss, Sharansky praises strong identities, of almost all varieties, including defending the principle of allowing Muslim women to wear head-coverings, a current hot-button issue in Europe. “To insist that people hide their identity, that they never present or express it in public, does not strengthen democracy … This frustration creates resentment against the law and alienation from the society that passed it,” he argues.

“Society must make a clear statement that an absolute principle of democratic society is a norm of nonaggression, where one cannot forcibly impose one’s views on others. New citizens must accept this norm. When there are irreconcilable conflicts between customs and democratic norms, customs must give way, whether that means vigorously prosecuting honor killings and genital mutilations or banning underage marriage. But nothing is intrinsically undemocratic about wearing a veil.”

Only if both identity and democracy are strong, will they reinforce each other and lead to peaceful, productive nations. “Far from being the hostile enemy of democracy, identity is in fact necessary to sustain it… . Identity without democracy can become fundamentalist and totalitarian. Democracy without identity can become superficial and meaningless. If either aspect is endangered, we all are endangered.”

- end of initial entry -

Ralph P. writes:

If Marantz” synopsis of the book is accurate then you are right, the book is flawed and not to be considered a valid intellectual defense of traditional identity. Yet more and more of these articles, books etc. keep appearing in the MSM, whereas in the past they were nowhere to be found. That in itself is encouraging.

I believe Sharansky means well and his voice carries weight, but it seems that these “right-liberals,” as you call them, are painting themselves into a tighter and tighter corner on this issue of identity. American Jews particularly have this problem, or, better said, Jews who address themselves to the West, as Sharansky is doing, because in as much as they identify with Israel they will not think of the impression it gives to the vast non-Jewish West when they seem to be writing about all of us but wind up focusing on Israel. I have not read the book so I am working off assumptions, but Sharansky’s point that a veiled Muslim woman’s identity should be protected alongside our own, in the West, comes off as rather insulting, not to mention missing the contradiction entirely. If he is for a strong Jewish identity in Israel then he should not object to a strong European identity in the West, sans veil.

Don’t eat steak and then say the oatmeal you want for us is just as good.

What this means is that universalism is dying hard in the right-liberal, but it is dying. Unfortunately I doubt it will die in McCain due to this book. But as the pressure mounts in the MSM to present a point of view that will not lose them money, it could be enough to neutralize his agenda should he win, particularly if the RINOs in Congress are ousted in favor of real conservatives. This year is doubtful but in 2010 the clamor for real red meat in our policies might well be deafening.

LA replies:

That’s very good treatment of the issues raised here.

I felt a little uncertain about posting this because I had only questions and possibilities about what Sharansky is really saying.

Carol Iannone writes:

This would be terrible if Sharansky is talking about, basically, multiculturalism. But, if he is, that is more proof of what we have said. That if you universalize excessively, and do not affirm cultural identity and peoplehood but only universal values, people will start to break off into smaller identities in order to give their lives meaning.

Thucydides writes:

Re Sharansky, I ordered his new book as soon as I saw the first reviews. Finding the right balance between the universal and the particular is the problem of our times. If some paleocons reject all universalism in favor some real or imagined historical culture, the liberals in their utopianism envisage the end of particularity and constitutive identities, all as part of the Enlightenment project. The postmodernists (Rorty) claim there is nothing foundational—everything is contingent, yet they want to cling to a liberalism that can find no support, just as a matter of the glory of “choice.” (Not likely to be very persuasive to the millions of people not sharing their parochial intuitions). Of course, universalist liberals jump to historicism as needed to support a relativism that is deployed selectively to argue against tradition. As you have so often pointed out, an abstract universalism strips us of the means to defend ourselves, our valued way of life, now under assault from within and without.

We need to affirm what is good in our culture, what is particularly ours. Of course, much of what is particular represents the universal in a particular form. The universal always finds expression in the particular, in myriad ways. At the same time, we must continually examine ourselves in light of some universal minimums, otherwise we stagnate, or drift into things that are indefensible. This self-awareness is a long ways away from the liberal universalism, however, which is actually hostile to all that is local and particular.

LA replies:

This reminds me of a memo I mailed to about 40 mainly neoconservative writers along with The Path to National Suicide in January 1991, in which I raised some additional points I felt were missing from PNS. Here is the last point in that memo:

3. I am of course aware that not only by my ideas, but by publishing this book with an old-right group like A.I.C.F., I risk alienating neo- and moderate conservatives. Indeed, immigration seems to be a main dividing line between the “paleos” and the “neos.” But if I may say so, I think there is an incompleteness on both sides of the great conservative divide. The problem is that the paleos, typified by Chronicles, place too much stress on an American particularism, while the neos seem to speak only of economic, universal man while disregarding America’s historical and cultural particularity. But as historian Henry Bamford Parkes observed, for a civilization to be viable it must succeed in reconciling the particular and the universal. Exclusive emphasis on the particular leads to tribalism; exclusive emphasis on universalism leads to anomie and disintegration.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 09, 2008 02:11 PM | Send